| Some servers love to dress up ... I wasn't one of them |
One thing I would not do was wear a costume on Halloween. My theory was this: The customers didn't give a damn, and who the hell wanted to run back and forth from the kitchen wearing Dracula's cape or God only knows what? Halloween night could be horrific enough without adding insult to injury.
Over the years, a
few patrons stopped in for dinner before attending costume parties. Back when I worked at a vegetarian restaurant, there was
the man carrying a bloodied fake hand who thought it would be hilarious
if he left it in the middle of the lettuce bowl on the salad bar. The
sticky fake "blood" got over everything and the owner kicked out the
jokester after we had to toss the contents
of giant bowl of iceberg lettuce in the trash.
The worst times, though, were when Halloween fell on a full moon. Whenever that happened, there was a
strong likelihood that the restaurant could be filled with real-life zombies, bloodsuckers, aliens, ghouls -- and cheapskates!
There was an artfully-wrapped Mummy at a different restaurant: maybe too well-wrapped, because he couldn't maneuver his arms or legs very well and spilled a glass of red wine all over his bandages. His date wound up feeding him.
And if servers did have the option to dress up for the holiday, invariably one or two of the male waiters decked out in drag, with none-too-realistic results. On one of those Full Moon Halloweens, two servers got into a volatile debate as to which one was "prettier." I stayed clear of that argument, but they insisted the bartender pick one or the other as the prettiest. "You're both really ugly," he told them before the two "ladies," utterly deflated, wobbled back into the kitchen on dangerously high platform-heeled pumps.
Halloween: I still get chills just thinking about it.
(Image via Flickr: Sea Turtle)
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